Asghar Abbas's Blog - Posts Tagged "trees"

I don’t care if she’s that, because she is not that or all that at all. I can’t sleep, this pewter season it’s too much, you know that by now. Good, you know what I am right now, what I am fixing to do here. This isn’t a fever left by a dream. Let us assume you are still where you are, though your claimants are few and far in between now. I can’t seem to wake you up, you can’t be awakened, can’t make you aware. So. We begin with a spoiler and as always, that spoiler is her. Like an inkling of the very first sound ever felt on this earth, the first round shook, the first wave of it, she is there, always. She was the original warhorn when all the demons and all demons wanted was peace. It’s her, always about her, much like this very season gray and dreary. A chilling season and chilled. A seasoned treat, unexpected sure but a treat nonetheless, a must-have viand, if you must and I entreat that you must.

Where is the body, where is the wake? Side by side and awake now, you told me she won’t be doing that, wouldn’t do that, because no true Celt would do that. She is a full-on Gaelic after all, and yet she is doing it. She has always been an informal fallacy, cute but impossible, hard to put into words. But I’ll say this though; to her credit, she did abandon her chase, ceased chasing something white, something small, something furry, something dirtied by all that yellow sunlight of yore, for me and my quiet words. She did, she did really. This lonely winter road, it gets to you, strange that we’ve both been on it. You paved it; I walked it, walked by it, on it and quelled something in her. That was the road and on that road, she swerved ever so prettily. She did. She didn’t disappear nor ended up into a curlicue of her fogs.

Despite the fact, the Winter has come again, in spite of the Snow falling once more. Even for a moment, she wasn’t tempted. Everything stops for a little while. Every stop matters. Every little thing matters, even if everyone does not. Everything stops after a while. You know something, it is rather painful to exist in someone else’s words, all the wrong colors, it just doesn’t work, but for me, it was never too painful to write about her. It was difficult, sure, but not hard. She was no Anne in that regard, extra pinky or not. She didn’t demand any but I gave her plenty and she took aplenty. Words that is. Words galore. Words aglow. We needed no raven then, and no raven wanted to be there. Then and there, now and here. Maybe she was no Marquess of Pembroke or her sublime marionette, but we must take into account that aged sunlight. How different it was there. All that sunlight that was there to touch, mold and meld together into something truly great, something concrete that you touch just like the sunlight. You don’t need anything. Pure, plenty, playful, pliable sunlight in your hands that’s a little less hungry. A perfect ochre color that’s easier to love. Hold it in your hands and pray with and you won’t feel so empty as to want their whispers. Okay, so she is no Anne, but I’ll give her one more chance. One more. For I want to do that more than once.

Even so, why everyone keeps telling me it means something when it clearly does not. She is visible, I can see her still, can’t you agree? That does mean something. As clear as her namesake in the nightly skies, floating up there so openly. I mean, I can step outside my room right now, even here, to look for the moon and it will be there too, it will matter, does it? The fullness of it engendering all sorts of interesting things weirdly cloaked as hope. And no, the cloak sure as hell isn’t red, not this time, not in this story. But then again, if it is not naked then it really isn’t hope, is it? Especially under an open sky. But the moon, you look up at it and it glows right back at you. The sheer enormity of that moon, of its rare smile, threatens all the pleasures of tomorrow. Bloodied that grin is, so is that girl, all her blades were sharp and sharpened. You know what though? Look at the moon, look at it, and feel nothing, feel it. You are nothing. See, even if it is not true, which it likely isn’t for what is really, it is still a good story. For someone like me, that’s something, but for someone like her, it’s not enough. It never was. But me? Hell, am I not a traveling gestour. Listen, hold it against the light, examine it, a few careless gestalts aside, a little hesitant sure but the Story of Her is rather quite engaging. Both of us were enthralled by it, we found it to be assertive, impressive, and oddly enough immersive. Her story had merit, even if she did not. I didn’t find it nauseating as their stories usually are, licked by the salt of memory. It certainly didn’t nauseate you and all of this is on you. Kinda your fault, buddy. What gives, why exert, why all this, won’t you see how wrong you were, how you hurt us, all of us? But will you just look at us, this is us doing different things, apart from wanting different things now. Oh, look the things we do to each other and the things we don’t do enough. How we destroy this plane, this planet that’s not planetary anymore.

Back to her. Always. She didn’t mind she was a terra firma of opportunities, a ground to build all my reasons and also grounds for your absolute dismissal. There wasn’t much common between the two of us, that girl and me, not even an apple or a sly snake except for our shared virgin earth and earthen were our feelings once until the spirits took them away. We were friendly toward one another, affable because of the distance, no bridge needed this time, and gentled by the night. I don’t know what else she did, man, what other maddening things, but we know this; groomed, saddled, and bridled, she rode all the water horses. Once she had all of Loch Oich to herself, all of it she owned. Ceffyl Dŵr, Ceffyl Dŵr, Ceffyl Dŵr, what other wrongs she did commit we keened, what else is she guilty of? Just how exactly is this my fault, what happened is not on me. She was never my creature though she never contested my will nor went against it. She was your sketch from the get-go. You made her an incendiary as you doodled the rest of tomorrow, but you couldn’t inflame her mind, could you. You needn’t poke me in the ribs, oh I know how beautiful she makes us. But why should that matter and this is important, she is not sacred, she is just a girl we shared. She was the only girl we shared really. But she was the kind of person who shared us as much as we shared her. We didn’t use her as much were used by her. We were just once hers, for a while. She spake. She spoke to us in her own tongue; ole and sweet-sounding something like that first wave of that sound, saying gghagg gagh ba ba ba blah blah ga. At least that’s what we heard. We are not complaining. Can you really blame us? Must you? Oh, you must. Then you must understand, you must know this pain. All that’s been written for five thousand years raging inside her head, tell me what castles did she capture? All the monsters couldn’t contain her imagination, and it’s funny because she was the one imagining them. It was her noggin, after all, it was her space they were dwelling in.

It is weird; lately, I have been waking up from dreaming of them, of the monsters and men, of monsters in men. But what about the dreams of the corpses? What is the dream of a corpse? Who is dreaming for them now? The rest of it is easy. It is rather simple, really no more secrets. The only secret being that she is no longer the Secret in the Book of Kells. I’ll grant her that. I’ll give her that much at least. Though she has taken much from me, so much more than that. Despite being under the water all the time and singing for the gods just beneath the shallow sallow surface. She became the book lost to time, in time, and with time. A book, history deliberately swallowed, but since she wasn’t heroic at all, she’s no hero, history didn’t spit her back out. But come on, look at it. And what things you can find between the pages of a book besides the printed words, a painted memory, a scent vaguely familiar familial even, almost lost, a burst of red mist that’s your future and something numinous in its absence. Whatever it is that’s there between the worn-out pages, gold or dirt it crumbles in your hand. It just does. Close your fist. Save it. Cherish it. Eat it. Gobble it. Words. Mine. Like she did.

Remember when she used to be the only sorrow in our life, ah good times and now it’s my own mind. Just as well, she went rogue, and her one and only rebellion are us. Oh, you didn’t know? I thought you had crammed every answer there is.
Me? I am not worried. Not I.
I know how this is played.
If I don’t move, I’ll matter. I know.
I don’t
Still, I don’t matter.

But she says thank you in Cherokee. So she does. Matter. And what does she say in Cree? She’ll wait, she says in Cree. Unlike you, she will wait for me. She misses me, poor little lamb; but she says she misses me in a language only known to her. She whispers things - to whom, the moon or to me, who can tell? She murmurs in a dead language. Why not? She was a linguist of all forgotten things last winter. Knower of dead languages and deader people, she is. But who could tell her the dead know her too? She whispered things in who knows what tongue. Well, you do. You know, either she misspoke or you misheard her and misinterpreted on purpose. But you heard what you wanted to hear and felt validated anyway. I don’t know why you bother peeking at the script when all you have to do is flick your wrist a little bit and a little darkly. You can tweak or even rewrite the whole thing, and just be done with it.

She matters, she concedes that herself. She turns. She hews the mountains in her way. She moves things in her wake and the moon follows her. She sips from yesterday’s rain and all the stars call her their own. She breaks nothing and yet the sea still blames her. The world, hers and mine, this world is ash right now, it is in ashes, it certainly tastes like ash. Still, she wants a second helping of that. She is like that. For her, the anatomy of lie is not in the actual act of lying but in tolerating that lie. She gets that. This world does not. Guess, which one of them is doomed? You guessed wrong.

She is the very last thing that matters to me now. Even though the end is not near and the very Last thing is not her. She is the only real happiness left of yesterday. Of home. From home. For Home. She is the very last link, broken to be sure, but tangible memento left of a dead house that is not haunted by her. I have done that before, taken care of Dead Houses. I have been the gaoler of sadness and it’s all sad now. But hey, if it makes you happy for me to be unhappy then I’ll be happy for you. I’ll wait for you to make up your mind, for the pleasure is in the waiting and the pleasure of her is all mine. It’s not so bad, like past good ole days and older tongues, come on now it’ll be like accepting what is already destined, appreciating the sooth that’s already been sayered and calling it Fate. When the truth being lack of Faith on your part and that’s ironic even without trying. Everything is half measured, except for her; she went all in.

The way I write, the way I write, charcoal of it all, the ink that’s barely there even in your hollows. The way she turns around and the way moon plays us both, partial to the way she flip-flops her mind on all the things, not around her, oodles of things. The subtle way she changes the color of leaves that’s almost sweet but mostly just unsettling, and the trees call her their natural ally, imagine that. Well, even you beyond the wall, sitting across the border can complete the next line of misplaced thought. It goes like this something like this, even when the dragons are imagining her. See, it wasn’t so bad. It was? Well, that’s too bad. To be perfectly honest, dragons don’t really think too much. The burden of thinking too much is the lot of humans. Anxiety eats them and then they are eaten by the dragons. The utter realization of this is such a delicious vittle, all set to be eaten.

I think it’s safe to say all the necessary fourth walls are no longer there, so let’s just do away with all the extra white noise. I know, you rather I wouldn’t think about it, bring it up in any way, or even remember it much. But I am helpless. I can’t help but think about it over and over again.
How you didn’t want me to meet her.
Not really, no.

In the middle of a fresh clearing, I was to meet up with her. In a civil twilight, I met her in the forest. Our shadows fell across each other’s in front of us, blades of grass twinkling, and I fell for her. She had met me halfway across the ground covered with felled pines, smiling at us, well at me she didn’t know you were there too, as she spun a web of false light, closing us on all sides from rest of the world. How you asked, well let me tell you that in a moment. First, we must let the northern lights tune up the band and play, today is Icelandic Music Day after all. Let the northern lights get ready to make a sacrifice. Not sure to whom will they be making their offering, since you are here with me.

She wasn’t quite the time traveler she thought she was. So she couldn’t quite avoid meeting us. To travel through space and time, she needed a key and a primer, she was both. Luckily, we never told her that. It’s rather simple, to slip through time and sift through space, you have to go through memories. I even allowed her to remember some. You have to remember, to remember that, remember that, and she didn’t want to remember, remember? Of course, you do, Mr.Böri. And you mustn’t worry about the moonlight; it’s gone, she ate it all. She truly is the girl who drank the moon; she really is the only one to do so there. All she had to was pick one memory and she couldn’t do, could she? King Kong didn’t have anything on her. Though she always won that game when she played hide and seek with the gentle ape. King Kong could never find her, she was a true haint, the girl who was visible no more, poof gone, the magic of her and he drank away his sorrows. Poor guy. King Kong was never big enough to find her.

But we were talking about you. Listen, for you to have even the slightest chance of getting over this and for any of it to make sense. In order for you to accept this narrative, you and I follow two different narratives and survive your own settings then you must own her too. The funny thing about owning her though, it’s more like trying to conquer the night with the help of blind moths. And that is what I desire for you beyond this sound. You see, I have been dealing with her existence long before I was made aware of yours, I dealt with her likes, mister before forever was forever. It’s all yours, yes but it’s your turn now. You can’t rid of her. Who’s the chattel?

For the longest, while now it hasn’t been about her. She knows that. All her tall trees are silent, numb, muted, hushed, waiting for me to paint her, subtly urging me on despite the fact I clearly don’t want to. I refuse to do that. To paint her now with all the leaves standing witness would be a mistake. It would be akin to trying to see the reflection of a girl who isn’t there anymore. And I don’t want to be on a special qui vive. I want to do more than just talk. Hey now, I don’t need to paint her to make her into a ruinous monster. You did the sketch, remember. How is this my fault again? This is my, you are not holding a mirror. Tell this, why all the monsters you sent were women?

Like I told you as I said, we met her in the quieted dell. But she was unaware I was carrying a passenger- you. You were like the shadowy malice from upstream color lingering just behind me, prickling the nape of my neck. We stood face to face only furlonged by little distance. She and I facing each other, you behind me and around us.

She promptly shut us off from the rest of the ugly world. She was unaware that you were there with me enclosed and hiding behind me. then she allowed me to see and spoke the trees rustled. Her accent had been robbed by the woods but it wasn’t the blue flute and my bruised fingers that had lured us here. It was you. we met in the crimson forest sure the trees silent her speaking I met in the reddened forest that had the ting like it had a bit a heavy juicy plum all the red dribbling but I’ll forget it was the wolves who had brought the two of us me and her, not you and me, together in a peopleless tribe. You couldn’t help it can you, you told the wolves I was home.

æandmeåÖimgtfhaita.